Service is the practical devotion, which alone can yield the fruit ...

When God is attained, your intention should be to serve the Lord without aspiration of any fruit in return for your love to Him. Service to Lord itself is the highest divine fruit. Service is like the plant yielding the divine fruit. Devotion is like the fertilizer and knowledge is like the water. The fertilizer and the water are essential for the generation of the fruit but they cannot yield the fruit directly without the plant. Therefore, you must understand as well as the limitation of knowledge and devotion and both these together constitute the theoretical devotion. Service is the practical devotion, which alone can yield the fruit, but the plant cannot generate the fruit without fertilizer and water. Hence, you must understand the importance and limitation of the service also. In every step you must understand both the importance and limitation of the step. You should not say that any step without the other two-step could yield the fruit. Service cannot be generated at all without the love and knowledge.

Unless you identify your child and unless you love your child, the service to your child cannot be seen at all.

Therefore, all the three steps are important and have their own limitations. No step can alone yield the fruit. The three divine preachers are together and have given the single composite spiritual effort, which constitutes the three subsequent steps. Service is like the plate of meals and the theoretical devotion is like drinking water. Even in a hotel the drinking water is given freely without any charge. Hence, you should not ask for any fruit for the theoretical devotion from God. If you ask for any fruit for theoretical devotion it is like charging for drinking water, which even a commercial hotel is not doing. This should not mean that the water has no value and the plate of meals, which alone is charged as the total value. While taking the meals suppose your throat is blocked and then you require the drinking water immediately. Then the value of the water is understood. In that time you cannot tell the eater to take another sweet instead of the valueless water. Therefore, you should not criticize any step as valueless and claim that any single step can alone yield the fruit.

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